Buy it once, wear it forever
Every player wears the league jersey and cap: a white or grey home shirt depending on division, a blue away shirt, the blue Ponce hat, grey or white pants, blue socks and a blue belt. Pants, socks and belt may be bought anywhere; the jerseys and cap come from the league's own online store, which sells a complete set -- two jerseys with a pre-assigned number, pants, belt, socks and cap.
The rule that matters is the last one: you buy the uniform once per age division, and it can be worn for every season and every team after that, including after one or more seasons away.
That is a league designing its kit around the fact that men in their forties leave and come back. Cleats are the player's own, and rubber, plastic or metal are all acceptable.
A High Cheese league page can carry the store beside the join form and the schedule, so the shirt and the season are bought in the same place.
Ponce De Leon Baseball in detail
- Named for the man who went looking for the Fountain of Youth, and run on that principle.
- One game a week, with three separate opening days in the first week of April.
- There are no league standings, on purpose, and every team makes the playoffs.
- With no standings kept, results are not published either.
- Teams are built centrally by state, age and talent, and no roster is published.
- No statistics are published, in a league that caps innings and hit batsmen.
- A league email, a league phone number, and a second address for photographs.
- Everyone who signs up makes a team, and the fees are published to the dollar.
- More than forty grounds across DC, Montgomery County and northern Virginia, each with an address and a map.
- Four runs an inning, nobody pitches before 36, and the batting order carries over from last week.
- Announcements and field status live at the top of the front page.
- The league asks players to send in game-day pictures; the division galleries say photos coming soon.
- No sponsor is named.
- Single elimination in spring and fall, seeded, with every team in.
- Founded in the 1980s — the site gives two different years — and serving 30-and-overs for more than thirty of them.
- A league manager and a managers' meeting; nobody is named.
- How old, how long, how often, and whether you will stick out.
- The rules, the costs and the uniform requirements are published as pages rather than files.
- A winter camp in Florida, a managers' dinner in March, three openings in April, and a fall deadline in August.
- The league is recruiting umpires, trains them, and pays them.